Hedgehog-Enabled Verifiable Instant Runoff Voting with Extreme Coercion Resistance on Solana

Abstract Electronic voting systems deployed on public blockchains offer the promise of unprecedented transparency and verifiability, yet contemporary solutions often present a stark trade-off between the expressiveness of the supported voting schemes and the robustness of their protection against sophisticated coercion tactics. This paper introduces a novel, fully-decentralized electronic voting system architected on the Solana blockchain that, for the first time, synthesizes verifiable Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) with a cryptographically-enforced mechanism for "extreme coercion resistance." Our system extends a baseline zero-knowledge voting architecture by incorporating two pivotal innovations: (1) a matrix-based ballot representation and a universally verifiable shifting procedure for IRV tallying, which enables complex, multi-round election computations to be conducted with full integrity; and (2) a "hedgehog/nullification" protocol, which empowers voters or their designated agents